People, places, and who cares about things…except bikes and pointe shoes, we kinda like those things.

Cataract Gorge & Fairy Forest: Uintas

Grandma Marlene wanted to take the kids to the Ferry Forest and Lane knew there was a swimming hole nearby. So, we packed everybody up and headed to the Uintas for a late afternoon-early evening adventure.

We decided to hit Cataract Gorge first to make sure it was warm enough.

Cataract Gorge is located along the Mirror Lake Highway about 22.5 miles outside of Kamas. You have to take the Murdock Basin turnoff. Per the website climb-utah:

Fom the Murdock Basin Turn-off, follow the “Duchesne River” signs all the way to the trailhead. Turn east on the Murdock Basin Road and follow it for 1.3 miles to a signed junction Take the east (right) fork and follow the road for 1.1 miles to a signed junction. Take the south (right) fork and follow the road for 3.1 miles to the Cataract Gorge Trailhead. The trailhead is easy to identify because the road ends at a large fenced parking area at the south end of the small lake.

Climb-Utah suggested we needed four-wheel drive and high clearance and they were right. We had our Sequoia and two mini vans carrying a total of 15 people. By the time we arrived at the rough spot in the road, we had to put everyone in the Sequoia for a 3 mile drive over pretty rocky and rutted terrain. That part was even memorable.

Once we arrived at the gorge, it took us a little bit to figure out the trail and down climb to the swimming hole. We monkeyed around with a zip line for a little bit, but it didn’t work real well.

Lane deserves the credit for figuring out the swimming hole and cliff jump. He was pretty persistent in finding a good launch point and the only one brave enough to take the first plunge. Once he did that and didn’t die, we knew the rest of us could take the leap.

The Fairy Forest was a weird, but cool place full of mimi-plots of eclectic trinkets and some were related to fairies. Nevertheless, the little kids thought it was super cool. In fact, I’ll probably have to take Norah back sometime.